Information Systems - The State of the Field
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easy to understand. The truly interesting question is how and why such anxiety gets systematically wound up in tales of academic legitimacy.
The simplest explanation for this confusion is the ethnocentrism of disciplines, a concept articulated in detail by Donald Campbell as the IS field was emerging (Campbell, 1969). Campbell wrote the paper following a frustrating period as head of the interdisciplinary program at Northwestern University. He postulated that interdisciplinary efforts typically fail due to the fundamental human tendency toward ethnocentrism. Broadly defined, ethnocentrism is the tendency of individuals to affiliate with those with whom they have much in common and to avoid those who appear to be different. Ethnocentric behavior need not be intentional. Those who exhibit it are often appalled when they are accused of it. The ethnocentric person need not be openly belligerent or xenophobic; it is enough simply to be anxious in the presence of those who seem ‘other’ or ‘alien.’
Academic ethnocentrism is grounded in and paves the way for hegemonic expectations regarding intellectual foci, methods of inquiry and pedagogy, which engenders nationalistic behavior among disciplines. Simon testified beautifully about this feature in his memoirs when he wrote:
I came to see that disciplines play the same role in academe as nations in international system. Academicians typically live out their whole careers within the culture of a discipline, rarely shaking off the parochialism this isolated existence engenders. (Still later I learned from my encounters with economics that disciplines undertake imperialistic adventures with the same zest as nations do.) (Simon, 1991, p. 173)
Ethnocentrism of this sort is certainly at work when people from other fields oppress IS professionals/researchers. We shall return to this point later. It is ethnocentrism within the IS field, however, that helps explain why the anxiety discourse has coalesced over the past two decades in the IS field toward concerns of academic legitimacy. A recurrent theme in the anxiety discourse is that the IS field’s intellectual scope is so broad that the field will devolve to a weakly federated community in which members relate more strongly to other fields than to IS (Benbasat and Weber, 1996). Moreover, the barriers to entry for such a community will be so low that weak entrants cannot be excluded and intellectual standards will collapse.
The IS field has always been broad due to the diverse intellectual roots of its founding scholars and the equally diverse issues that, from the start, have related to the use of IT in human enterprise. In addition, the field has become increasingly broad over the years
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while the IT revolution has unfolded. Consequently, the field has continually struggled to identify its center. The inability to find a ‘true’ center is disconcerting for people who have a tendency to become ethnocentric. Therefore, the natural reaction is to declare a center and attempt to persuade everyone to acknowledge it. If everyone in the field acknowledges the declared center, a sense of academic solidarity and shared intellectual purpose will follow and anxieties might diminish. However, the intellectual agenda of the IS field is constantly changing for reasons noted earlier, so the center remains elusive. As a result, a feeling of inadequacy pervades the field.
The perceived inadequacy of the field is usually articulated as a shortfall against one or both of two larger ideals: ‘ideal scope’ (i.e., the field is too heterogeneous) and ‘ideal theory’ (i.e., the field does not have any theories). These are independent issues, but they are frequently conflated, resulting in deleterious consequences for the IS field. It is useful to examine these closely.
What is the Ideal Scope for Legitimacy of the IS Field?
The ideal scope argument entails the relationship between identity and legitimacy discussed earlier. Given that identity is a required condition of legitimacy (and illegitimacy), anything that confuses identity will confuse the subsequent assignment of legitimacy. The key characteristic of academic identity is seen to be consistent attention to particular kinds of problems. Too broad a range of foci by members of the field can threaten identity and therefore legitimacy. The question then is, how broad is too broad? Currently, it is impossible to come up with a definitive, identity-sensitive limit to the breadth of the IS field; there is simply too much disagreement among the field’s membership to permit this outcome. It is also difficult to set up the right parameters that help define such limits by generalizing from the experience and success of other fields. For example, what is good for physics is not necessarily good for IS as it grapples with a different, dynamic domain composed of artifacts. The recent effort to encourage a focus on the ‘IT artifact’ is a good example of how the field is seeking ways to effectively identify parameters that help define adequate boundaries for the moment. Yet the fact that the IS field does have enough identity to be considered illegitimate by some proves that the current degree of breadth is sufficient to maintain identity, even if the identity is imprecise.
Elements of academic ethnocentrism can easily be mistaken for problems of ideal scope. In the IS field, as in other heterogeneous
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fields, scholars of one persuasion often look down on the scholars of other persuasions for the ‘weakness’ or ‘irrelevance’ of their scholarly work. Breaking the field into homogenous sub-fields, which no longer talk to one another, might solve this problem in the short run because animosity declines. This happens, however, only at the expense of collaborating on problems that cannot be understood from the perspective of any single sub-field. We believe that such negative consequences for the field have been key determinants in recent calls for more diverse and detailed research on IT artifacts (Benbasat and Zmud, 2003; Weber, 2003; Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001). This dilemma is not attributable to the scope of the field but rather to the behavior of individuals within the sub-fields for whom ethnocentric biases are more important (and easier) than the challenge of the scholarly work itself.
What is the Ideal Theory for the Legitimacy of IS Field?
The ideal-theory argument flows directly from the call for better legitimacy, as some highly legitimate academic fields have erected a set of strong theories at their center. The visible example of such fields is understandably attractive to fields that feel less legitimate. The ideal theory argument also obtains a powerful warrant from the philosophy of science in the opinions of Popper and his followers (Popper, 1968) that speak to the minds of many scholars. Popper’s original claim in his ‘Conjecture and Refutations’ was that academic legitimacy is derived (or at least ought to be derived) only from the theoretical contributions made by a field. This view is strongly disputed by many subsequent scholars in the philosophy of science. Within the IS field, however, the warrant usually stands uncontested.10
Strong theory can be useful to any academic field as it can enhance a field’s cognitive or pragmatic legitimacy. However, strong theory is demonstrably not necessary for academic legitimacy and there is no evidence to suggest that the creation of such theory per se will make legitimate a field that lacks legitimacy (Lyytinen and King, 2004). The problem with the ideal theory argument is that it takes a reasonable position with regard to the nature of academic inquiry and the value of theoretical abstractions, but then it causes trouble, however, when it directly equates theory with legitimacy, and lack of theory with illegitimacy.11 As explained elsewhere, academic legitimacy is a consequence of the social salience of the topics studied, the presence of strong results and the ability to maintain disciplinary plasticity (Lyytinen and King, 2004) rather than the strength of the theoretical center. To the extent that a strong theory yields legitimacy, it does so
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primarily by contributing to the ability of a field to achieve strong results. Theory is an input to the process of getting strong results, not an outcome. Nonetheless, a strong theory is not even a necessary input for all fields and in few fields is it alone sufficient to produce or sustain strong results. Why, then, is the call for theory so powerful an argument in discussions about legitimacy?
The persistence of theory as a discriminator in obtaining legitimacy is best explained by its role in the problems of academic ethnocentrism. Theory has acquired exaggerated importance in some academic fields as many scholars live and die by the theories into which they have been socialized (Kuhn, 1996). This creates a political climate ripe for abuse. Those who can claim the mantle of theory band together to consolidate their power. They then use that power against those, whose work is not fundamentally theoretical in nature or does not concern the correct type of theory. The question of how best to do the work is subordinated to what methods are deemed politically correct for any kind of scholarly work. This outcome is a perversion of the original high ideals of the academy, which call on scholars to pursue, develop and defend new knowledge using whatever means are most appropriate to the task. This distortion of the value of theory readily creates another backlash. Those whose work is not best pursued theoretically respond by refuting any call for improvement in the theoretical state of the field, because they fear a subsequent attack on the quality of their work.
The problem with the ideal theory is further exacerbated when the ideal-theory argument is conflated with the ideal-scope argument. Those who criticize calls for improved theory often invoke the accusation that the pursuit of theory will necessarily narrow the scope of the field. This accusation has superficial appeal because doctrinaire, theory-wielding thugs who beat up on their colleagues for a-theoretical weakness are usually narrow-minded people. The negative reinforcement of ‘theory’ with ‘narrow’ obscures the fact that many powerful theoreticians are also broad-minded individuals who see value in a wide array of intellectual approaches to problems.12
On a substantive level, there is no evidence to support the claim that the pursuit of theory (or theories) per se narrows the scope of a field. On the contrary, the strongest of theories tend to be broadly applicable and enhance multiple lines of inquiry, as seen in many theories of economics, psychology, and social behavior. Likewise, theories of thermodynamics had great influence across a huge swath of fields, from high-energy physics to molecular biology. In addition, strong theories often have metaphorical power beyond their immediate targets. This can be observed in the profound influence of quantum
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theory, specifically Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, on fields as far-ranging as philosophy, religion, literary criticism and cognitive psychology or in the current buzz around complexity and chaos theory in multiple fields ranging from biology, physics, meteorology, economics and organizational behavior. Good theory does not narrow fields; people with specific interests narrow fields. Academic ethnocentrism is to blame, not theory.
Recapitulation: Scope and Theory in the IS Field
To summarize, the ideal-scope and ideal-theory arguments are not helpful to reforming the anxiety discourse. The ideal-scope argument is at odds with the IS field’s tradition of being open to new ideas, as required in extremely rapidly changing fields. In fact, low barriers to entry and exit mean that smart people can feel free to come and go in this dynamic field, thus cross-pollinating IS scholarship with other fields. Similarly, the ideal-theory argument is at odds with the IS field’s need for flexibility to accommodate rapid change. Strong theory is important, but not when it is used as a political weapon or stymies the need for fast cognitive change. The IS field’s rambunctious behavior draws fire from incumbent powers, but that behavior is natural for a young field: it is a good thing, although it is anxiety producing. A certain amount of anxiety is by necessity built in to the IS enterprise as long as the enterprise is working well. As Hegel stated, ‘without passion there is no achievement.’ The challenge for the IS field is to separate healthy anxiety arising naturally from the focus of study from dysfunctional anxiety that arising from academic ethnocentrism and hegemony inherent in academic politics.
Institutional Politics and Hegemony
As we suggested earlier, IS faculty members in schools of management are particularly susceptible to the anxiety discourse. This comes as no surprise: they are surrounded by faculty in management sub-fields who have faced their own issues surrounding legitimacy. None of the management fields is much older than a century. The ‘modern’ management school’s focus on finance, accounting, marketing and so on did not become common until the mid-20th century following the rise of professional management as practice. Moreover, the roots of management school education lie in teaching traditional professional practices that were frowned upon by other social sciences until after WWII, when management studies became more scientific (see, for
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example, Simon, 1991). The difference in age between the established management sub-fields and the IS field is only two or three decades, but the extra time has given established fields the ability to cultivate potent mechanisms of internal socialization and enforcement. They keep their internal fights under control in order to exert power and direct resources toward themselves through the mechanisms of ethnocentrism. In simplest terms, they simply declare that only they are ethnically pure enough to deserve resources. In doing so, they often present themselves as defenders of the academic ideal and position those who are not their peers as undeserving. They are quick to fire the deadliest shot that can be taken at any academic field: they impugn its intellectual quality. The IS field is often on the receiving end of such attacks.
It should come as no surprise that the IS field comes under attack from other management sub-fields; this is the essence of ethnocentrism. What is puzzling is the way the IS field gives in to this pressure by starting to question its own legitimacy, thus playing directly into its opponents’ hands. Unfortunately, the IS field’s own anxiety discourse turns back on the IS field itself, increasing concerns about the field’s identity, its theoretical strength, and its academic legitimacy. By internalizing this rhetoric from without and turning it on each other, the field engages in a phenomenon called horizontal violence common to marginalized fields of work.13 IS academics start to look at themselves and at each other as the primary causes of their anxiety. Unfortunately, they find much to dislike. They are harshly critical of each others’ papers and proposals, they treat publications in major journals as a resource to be rationed rather than a discussion to be promoted and they grasp at efforts to define the field narrowly around their preferred interests. In so doing, they make it easy for opponents to argue that the IS field is weak because, ostensibly, even people within the field think it is weak. Ethnocentrism from without promotes ethnocentrism within.
The nature of the disciplinary game is that the IS field will never get past its anxiety discourse by improving itself so much that other fields will accept it as good. As long as other fields get to define what it means to be good, they can move the target at will. The IS field should refuse to play this game on the grounds that it fails on absolute terms (i.e., the IS field does not fall short on any absolute standard) and relative terms (the IS field is no worse than other fields in terms of academic quality). The argument is bogus, but when left uncontested, it becomes reified and powerful. The key to ending the anxiety discourse and the underlying anxiety that produces it is to find solidarity within the field and push back against the oppression from without.
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ANGLE OF ATTACK
We return now to the question of whether the quest for a strong theoretic core might change the balance of power and influence legitimacy in favor of the IS field. We do not believe having such a theoretic core is necessary to achieving legitimacy; if obtained, it will not guarantee legitimacy. Still, we agree that having a strong theoretic core might help establish continuity across lines of inquiry within the field. It also might help develop a better public image of the field (symbolic capital) and thus enhance in the long run the field’s ability to handle the design and use of IT in human enterprise. Unfortunately, the process of establishing such a theoretic core will probably outlast the expected careers of the many people currently in the field and thus will not relieve much anxiety in the short run.14 Most important, the quest for a theoretic core will not reduce the oppression endemic to the institutional environments of many IS scholars. The focus on the core as the savior is misplaced and can even be dangerous. Other angles of attack will take effect more quickly. We suggest three.
First, the IS field should become more aggressive in defense of its own legitimacy by repudiating unwarranted accusations from those in other fields whenever they arise. This must occur at all levels and must be done consistently in order to establish the clear understanding that such oppression will not be tolerated. There is nothing new in this strategy; it is simply ‘tit for tat,’ established empirically as the quickest path to equilibrium in the theory of cooperative games (Axelrod and Hamilton, 1981). This does not mean the IS field should shy away from legitimate criticism; on the contrary, the field should embrace such criticism in the spirit of open scholarship. At the same time, the IS field must respond aggressively to politically motivated attacks masquerading as responsible assessments of the IS field’s academic quality. In the end, the IS field must be the sole authoritative arbiter of academic quality for the IS field.
Second, the IS field should exploit its expanding opportunities in both instruction and research. Much of the recent anxiety discourse seems to have been triggered by a dramatic decline in IS enrollments following the crash of the dot.com boom. This echoes similar concerns that have existed for some time, most notably the fear that other management sub-fields are now competing or soon will begin to compete for students on the IS field’s turf. The defensive strategy of closing ranks around a core set of IS topics and fighting for control of them is a losing proposition over the long run. The explosive growth in IT applications across many domains precludes the IS field’s ability to establish such turf, much less control it. Instead,
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the IS field should exploit emerging instructional opportunities in the way it did once before in response to the explosive growth in administrative data processing applications in the 1960s and 1970s. As in the past, research opportunities go hand in hand with instructional opportunities. Fortunately for the IS field, such opportunities abound.
Despite the dot.com crash, enterprise-oriented applications of IT continue to grow dramatically and enrollments in related programs will continue to grow globally. Nonetheless, these opportunities pale in comparison to the rapidly growing demand for the skills of the IS field that lie outside the confines of traditional business education. These new opportunities are in the areas of manufacturing, science, health, entertainment, transportation and so on. IS academics outside management schools are already pursuing these opportunities successfully. The large IS population in management schools have much to offer to these expanding areas of IS work. Moreover, they have much to gain in both research and teaching opportunities by engaging them. Naturally, the sometimes-myopic institutional constructs of professional education create challenges in exploiting such opportunities. Yet the IS field has continually met such challenges since it began. Indeed, it has a tradition of following opportunity wherever it might lead (see, for example, Mason, 2004). This type of pioneering spirit is needed now and will continue to benefit the IS field in the future as it has in the past.
Finally, the IS field will have to work harder and be better than its critics. This requirement has always been imposed upon the young. In rising to that expectation, the young normally create progress for all. Creating a stronger theoretical grounding for the IS field is one component of this effort, but only if it is done without narrowing the focus of the field. The IS field must engage issues that are important to its members and welcome new entrants with interesting views and opinions. The IS field must embrace and exploit research strategies appropriate to the study of those issues without allowing narrow methodological orthodoxy to be imposed from without or generated from within. Contrary to the complaints of critics, the IS field has learned over time to set high expectations of itself. Those expectations should be set even higher, but they must be set entirely within the IS field, by members of the IS field and calibrated by other fields only when the work in those fields directly complements the work of individuals in the IS field.
The future of the IS field lies in being tough on the field’s critics when that criticism is politically motivated, in following instructional and research opportunities irrespective of what institutional boundaries must be crossed and in setting and striving for tough academic standards on the IS field’s own terms. This set of challenges is not as
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daunting as it might seem. The survival of the IS field over the past 30 years shows these to have been key strengths of the field all along; the same still holds true. The founders of the IS field blazed an exciting trail, but it is not the trail that lies ahead. As Whitehead rightly noted, ‘A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost.’ The spirit of the field’s founders provides inspiration, but the shape of the field’s future lies in the efforts of a new generation of scholars who must weigh carefully the meaning of the anxiety discourse we have been discussing and what its implications are for their intellectual agendas.
A curious contradiction exists between the evident reach of the IS field’s ambitions since its inception and the grasping for legitimacy that lies at the heart of the anxiety discourse. The opening quote from Browning’s poem and the title of this essay, which was inspired by this quote, can be read in a number of ways. One is a call to reach out and grasp what one can. Another is an admonition to never reach for more than can be successfully grasped. We feel neither serves our purpose. Instead, we suggest that the heart and soul of the IS field’s future lies in reaching beyond what can be grasped. Accepting this risk is an acceptable price to pay for aspirations of heaven.
NOTES
1 We are indebted to colleagues in different parts of the world where we have presented and discussed our ongoing struggle to make sense of the evolution of the IS field. These include colleagues at Case Western Reserve University, the University of Michigan, the University of Western Ontario, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Nanyang Business School, London School of Economics, Aagder College, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and IRIS 1999, 2003 among others. Several anonymous reviewers were extraordinarily helpful in making us think more carefully about what we were trying to say.
2See Lyytinen and King (2004).
3Alchemy (best known for its quest to turn base metals like lead into precious metals like gold) was once a mainstay of legitimate academic activity. It lost favor as scientific knowledge grew. Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, as well as most of the founders of The Royal Society of London, were active alchemists throughout their lives.
4We make this assertion after years of collective endeavor as reviewers and editors in academic journals in the IS field and elsewhere. We also recommend the excellent recent article by DeSanctis (2003).
5The term ‘information systems’ seems to have been coined by Börje Langefors in the 1965 IFIP World Conference. MISQ and ICIS—the first premiere research journal and conference—started in the late 1970s. AIS was formed in the late 1980’s. The field is about 30 years old.
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6 As a modest example, few elite universities have closed their classics departments, in spite of vanishing enrollments, on the grounds that classics represent the ancient heart of the academy.
7 US News and World Report usually rates Princeton and Caltech in the ‘top 5,’ although neither has many professional programs.
8 The recent call by IS researchers to focus more intently on the ‘IT artifact’ is testimony to the close bond between the IS field and the underlying technology and the challenge this sets for the field and its research agenda.
9These observations are anecdotal but could easily be tested using survey research.
10There are many who disagree with Popper’s philosophy of science on strictly philosophical grounds (e.g., Stove, 1982 and Bleicher, 1982), and many others from the sociology of science who claim that, irrespective of the philosophical issues, the behavior of successful scientists simply does not conform to the model implied by Popper (e.g., Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Latour, 1987; Traweek, 1992). For a more detailed discussion, see Lyytinen and King (2004).
11It is important to note (as we demonstrate in Lyytinen and King, 2004) that ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ syllogisms of this sort are not symmetrical. The negative one (i.e., that the lack of theory implies a lack of legitimacy) is a logical fallacy (denial of the antecedent) and cannot be defended even on logical grounds.
12The dog of the IS field is no less susceptible to Pavlovian conditioning than any other dog. The negative reaction to the calls for improved theory is a learned response made more powerful through the administration of negative, intermittent reinforcement by narrow-minded and wrong-headed colleagues.
13The term arose in the study of oppressed occupational communities that internalize and redirect the oppression at each other. The original work on the subject has focused on the field of nursing and is of growing interest in the sociology of work and occupations (Duffy, 1995). It can be seen in many other fields, including computer science, environmental science, film studies, and women’s studies.
14This is based on our reading of the histories of other academic fields that have evolved strong theoretic cores (Lyytinen and King, 2004).
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